


The Anathema of The Beast

by aelur



Category: Historical RPF, Western European & Related Occult Traditions
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29267727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelur/pseuds/aelur
Summary: July 1909. Austin Osman Spare meets with Aleister Crowley, renowned occultist and editor in chief of the Equinox, to submit some of his works for publication.
Relationships: Aleister Crowley/Austin Osman Spare, Aleister Crowley/Viktor Neuburg





	The Anathema of The Beast

**Author's Note:**

> So let's start by confessing this is not fully my work, it's something of a collab between my boyfriend and myself. We're both big occult nerds and through endless insisting I ended up selling him the AOS/AC ship, and last christmas I asked for this fic as a gift.  
> He's the kind to meticulously research stuff, so he came up with the idea of setting the story around the time of the publication of one of the Equinox volumes, since Austin Osman Spare actually was featured in it. He isn't big on fanfiction in general, and so I felt like the final product needed a bit of touch up to make it a bit more exciting for me and fill some of the gaps (he's totally cool with it BTW - it was my gift so I could do with the story as I wanted). I think it'll become evident there's two voices in the narration as we don't have similar writing styles - particularly in the dialogue! I kind of followed his guide on how to render AOS' cockney accent in writing but my first language isn't english so I don't really know what a cockney accent would be like in writing at all. 
> 
> So here's the final product! There's a lot of references to both of their philosophies and works, but I think if you're here reading this it's very likely you're aware of how Aleister Crowley & Austin Osman Spare were and what they're magickal work was about.

**July, 1909**

It took the struggling artist 30 minutes to collect his portfolio and walk from 13 Bruton Street to 124 Victoria Street where the Great Beast kept his "office". Even from street level, the smell of incenses and hashish wafted from its windows, and the occluded view of red velvet curtains through the windows made it look more like a bohemians opium den than a place of work. But then again, anyone calling themselves the "Vicegerent of God upon Earth" as way of an introduction during an art show while being so plastered that he doesn't take the complimentary glass of wine like the rest of them is most likely not someone who lives a buttoned up life.

Late evening, the next door Royal Standard Music Hall stood empty and closed, its ornate facade a mislead from the real eccentric’s set up in the plain apartment next door. Putting his cumbersome portfolio down, he pulled the bell while admiring the ochre of twilight reach onto the former glory of the theatre he never visited, while foot and carriage traffic from Victoria station across the way carried on without it. It created a melancholic scene, but there was no lack of similar pictures in the East End where he spent most of his days. The hum of magick prospering next door was its own shoot of hope.

Finally the door to the apartment block creaked open slightly, and an eye peered through the crack.

"How can I help you?" a meek voice squeaked.

"Hullo" the artist responded in his only slightly less meek voice, terrified his cockney would come through, "I'm here to see Mr. Crowley. I'm an-" _illustrator_ was going to be the next word, but a the roar of the beast boomed down the stairwell, answering for him; "NEUBURG YOU FANCY-BOY, IT'S SPARE. I TOLD YOU HE'D BE HERE, OPEN THE BLASTED DOOR AND STOP ACTING LIKE LIKE HORUS WHEN IT DOESN'T SUIT!"

Victor Neuburg widened the crack, and Austin Osman Spare took himself and his portfolio inside, greeted by a foggy miasma of incenses and hashish. Neuburg, ticked off, remarked:

"Just follow your nose upstairs and you'll find him."

To his further annoyance, it didn’t come out quiet enough that Crowley could not hear him.

"I DON'T NEED MY EARS TO HEAR YOUR LIMP WIT FLOP AROUND NEUBURG".

Thus the two walked up the stairs, Neuburg first with a lightness befitting of a dancer, Spare with the lumber of a workman. The only similarity of the two was their curly hair, but otherwise they could not have been more different in their manner.

"Pardon my manners, I’m Victor Benjamin Neuburg. I believe you've met Aleister already?"

"Austin Osman Spare. And yes, know him from his society. He was at my exhibition a few days ago, invited me to come by. I understand you run a magazine from here?"

"The Equinox. We're only really getting started, though I'm sure he’ll fill you in."

The office was more like a curiosity cabinet; the red curtains, black painted floors, various drawings and statues of Buddhas, Egyptian gods and Hindu divinities on the walls and mantle, a leopard skin rug by the fire, and a prominent stuffed crocodile lying across a desk, guarding a mass of papers like a dragon with it's hoard. At a glance, the papers all seemed to be failed drafts of poetry. A large silver censer, the kind seen in a Catholic church, hung above the back end of the room above a couch and sitting room chairs, bellowing out so much smoke it irritated the eyes. Below it, with a bulbous pipe made of horn hanging from his mouth, sat the Great Beast 666, Aleister Crowley. His brow was tense in disapproval at the single page manuscript he was reading, and he barked "Faugh! Bloody Irishman, clearly has never actually seen the sphinx. Blasted thing doesn't even rhyme!"

He turned to face Spare. "One cannot cover up Yeats' stink with this smoke. He must fill Dunsany's head with fibs in order to raid his drinks cabinet. And to think he's trying to lead a charge on Home Rule!" Crowley laughed in dismissal and stood up, discarding the page on a nearby desk as he crossed the room and extended his hand.

"Glad you came. It might not look it, but do believe me when I say editing is a Herculean Labour! Between you and I, I have already contributed more to our second issue than I'd hoped, so I guess Dunsany's poem will have to do."

Spare attempted to say something witty, but could only manage "W-well, he's a popular writer these days. Perhaps it will 'elp sell some?"

Crowley gave a confused smile in return. Walking across to an ornate drinks cabinet, he produced two glasses of whiskey, handing one to Spare and gesturing back towards towards the couch and chairs. Crowley nudged a coffee table between them before reclining on the couch while Spare took a chair.

"So! I believe you have some of your fantastic art for me?" the beast gestured to the coffee table, before realising Victor Neuburg was still in the room, watching him. Once again, the man’s presence roused a certain mean spirit from him. "Neuburg, if you're just going to stand there, check the cellar for some ice before it melts."

Spirit broken, the dancer dragged himself out like a scolded dog, failing to retain his dignity. Spare bit down on his discomfort, feeling not unlike a man who’d just walked in the middle of an argument between a husband and his wife. If he’d wanted to take a flight of fancy, he could’ve ventured out a guess or two as to what had happened before his arrival, but he wasn’t someone who was prone to gossip. Instead, he bravely attempted to broach the subject as he heaved his portfolio onto the table.

"Stressed?" he said, cracking half a smile.

"Faugh! My little Yid compatriot is the least of my concerns. The Royal Mail is of the opinion that priority mail should be delivered a week late, and because of that we’ve had to delay the publication another month. Such things make excellent kindle for domestic fires."

Without meeting his eyes, Crowley took it upon himself to open Spare’s portfolio. He was agitated, body brusquely bent over the drawings, yet every page he turned he did so with the utmost delicacy. It occurred to Spare that for the Oxford and the Cambridge public school boys like Neuburg, Crowley must’ve appeared intimidating, almost larger than life. It was perhaps the perception born out of the contradicting nature of the man’s every action and every word, which shrouded him in a veil of mystery. For a tenement’s son like him, it was easy to see through it.

Despair had a strange way of manifesting in the mind of the gentry.

As Spare laid out in his mind his own portrait of the man sitting next to him, he too was the object of intense scrutiny. Crowley uncovered the artist’s inner visions as they’d been laid out on paper; truly psychedelic ink illustrations that took a single line for a walk, morphing it's subject matter from grotesque caricatures to angel wings to flames, back to trollish faces and chaotic demons, all whisped across the pages like frozen opium smoke captured in a process of automatic drawing. Even the more traditional, "manual" portraits all featured a lenticular distortion as though viewing the subject through a carnival mirror, adding their own sense of otherworldliness. Ifrits, satyrs, faeries, horned pagan gods, and twists of line that suggested such vulgar displays of sexuality that they would be potentially be impounded as "smut" by the constabulary if displayed in public. All snaked from his mind and his brushes, weaving their nests onto a two dimensional space outside of time.

Crowley was fascinated. Without tearing his eyes from the pages, he said "Mr. Spare, I'm sure I never need to tell you, but make no mistake that you are truly a visionary artist like the rest of us."

Unable to take a compliment in earnest, the artist attempted humility instead, failing to keep up his proper Queen's English accent and it's annunciated t-s and h-s; "No' a' all!". He winced, expecting the usual upper-class look of concern from the Cambridge educated moneybags thumbing through his art. The Cambridge dropout next to him flashed him with a lopsided smile instead, before dropping his gaze again to study the next drawing.

Crowley’s fingers tapped against the edge of the drawing once, almost unconsciously. His gaze lingered; it was poignant, almost as if he wanted Spare to notice. The portfolio he’d put together wasn’t the one he’d have usually shown his potential clients. There had always been Spare the Illustrator and Spare the Magician, and it was more often than not that he could only choose to be the latter. For the Equinox, for Aleister Crowley, he could perhaps present as both. From the depths of his archive emerged all his fancies, his sigils, his desires. On paper there was crude nudity, sexual suggestion, the realism of sagging breasts and the exaltation of his own naked form. The drawing that caught Crowley’s attention was a prime example of that: Spare’s nude self-portrait floating amidst the fog with other naked bodies.

Feeling eyes staring over his shoulders, Crowley turned to the next leaf, revealing a positively sci-fi scene of Spare -clothed in a robe this time- breaking in a strange alien-like beast like a broncho. Titled "AOS - Rampant", Spare was depicted in a scene akin to the Force tarot card, atop a spindly reptilian monster with knife-like talons, calmly guiding it with his hand on the creature's long snakish tongue. It exuded a confidence of a martial artist applying just enough strength to get the job done, no more, no less. True dominance.

Crowley forgot to breathe for a moment.

The clink of a bucket dropped onto a desk gave the both of them an excuse to move and exhale; Neuburg had returned from the cellar with the ice in some mild protest. Without making eye contact with either man at the far end of the room, he turned and left, simply saying "going home" like a sad robot.

Too distracted to remember being mad with Neuburg, Crowley just cleared his throat and stood up a little too fast, with the excuse of chipping ice for their whiskeys.

"What are you working on these days?"

He dropped some ice into Spare's glass. Their eyes met briefly. His portfolio still laid open on the coffee table, drawings desperate to free themselves from their paper prison. The lines of the fog stretched out, licking at their wrists, and the artist felt more exposed than ever.

"W-well, one of 'em there is for this book I'm doing. Calling it the Book of Pleasure I am. Or Book of Self-love, maybe, no' sure ye'." The ice jingled, a little too much. Figures contorting in the air, in his mind, the open entrance to the closed palace of the king. So exposed. He tried to disguise the shaking of his hand and brought the glass to his lips, pausing to blurt out a polite "Cheers" before taking a hefty swig. Clearing his throat and reminding himself to include his t-s again, he continued "They are my automatic drawings. I'm sure you do something similar, but I enter into a trance and let the, well, energies I suppose, do the drawing for me, in a sense."

Something gleamed in Crowley’s eyes.

"Of course! I’ve done similar!"

From the way he moved, it seemed that he’d planned that beforehand. Crowley reached behind the chair and produced his own smaller canvas, displaying it proudly to Spare. Suddenly the roles had reversed, and the other man had become the school boy, excited to be sharing their naughty doodles with a friend. Spare took one look at the canvas and smiled.

The painting itself was reminiscent of those post-impressionists Spare had seen Roger Fry praise in his articles. It was certainly childlike; a shockingly crude, flat, and ugly portrait of a...man? A woman? An elf? Spare could not discern as it was simply not nuanced enough in any regard than to be any more than basic scribble of a humanoid. Its colours were clumsily laid on the canvas, at times muddling each other. It was while he explored the amateur strokes that he noticed the tell-tale outlines of penises hidden throughout.

It caught him so off guard, he couldn’t suppress the barking laugh that came out of him.

“Pardon me,” he said, trying his best to reign in his accent. “It’s very nostalgic. All these hidden... uh... _phalluses,_ not very unlike Aubrey Beardsley. Are you familiar with his work?”

It was evident the Great Beast had been hoping for a different reaction. The schoolboy grounded, the comparison with another artist made him deflate.

“We share a mutual acquaintance,” he placed the canvas next to his feet. “Although I’ve never met him, I do have a copy of his Morte d’Arthur.”

An air of sadness had enveloped him. Spare sensed that there was a story behind it, and wishing to distract his potential patron from his reminiscence, chose to change the topic.

"What is your process?"

"Ah,” Crowley welcomed the question, eyes snatching back the gleam they’d had before. “Behind you on the mantle there, observe the Indian art of the man and woman copulating. That's a devotional piece of work created by Tantrics that I picked up during my travels in the East. It's one of their techniques of experiencing sexual union with a female divinity. It involves the poses and breathwork of any good yogic practice, but combined with the combination of kalas -sexual fluids, old boy- and the godforms we discussed previously." the beast explained. “Through body and through art, I do my own devotional practice to these sexual energy currents.”

Spare’s eyes diverted to his own work before fixing them again on the mantle Crowley was pointing at. The lines of the fog contained within the boundaries of the portfolio rose again. Twisting bodies from the fringes of East London on the coffee table, twisting bodies from the East enshrined on the wall. And then, a crude drawing by the magician’s feet, failing to capture the sublime sexuality it so dearly wanted to praise.

What was it that he found so irritating in that painting? Was it that its execution was childlike, or that its conception transformed the sublime into the vulgar?

“The work seems to have a certain... obsession with the physical aspect of it all,” Spare said with delicacy. “If it’s the divine union of the gods what ultimately we devote ourselves to... Focusing on the minutiae of sexual fluids and simple phalluses, isn’t it all rather profane?”

"I've found the Hindus to be very saccharine with how they address their gods. They try to romance and woo the Dakinis in their words, yet when it comes down to it it's about the fucking, pure and simple. Do they not decorate entire temples with images of penetration and fellatio and pure filth and ecstasy?”

Spare said nothing; it was evident Crowley had had that argument many times. The magician continued, “I've visited hundreds of these temples, and nowhere have I observed reliefs of sweet hand-in-hand strolls through the park. No sweet pecks on the cheek, but tens of thousands of wands in cups! If it wasn’t about the _phalluses_ , as you put it, Mr. Spare, if it wasn’t about licking and sucking, fucking and cumming, then what should we make of it all? Because when the artists drew and sculpted in the name of their gods, they weren’t giving life to romance novels."

"What about Krishna and his followers then?” Spare countered. Seeing Crowley so flustered invoked a certain mean spirit in him, and he felt like poking the Beast for a bit. “There’s no shortage of art of him and his attendants in romantic scenes. And as for all the wands in cups, Mr. Crowley... Are we so sure we can unanimously decide, as a species, what is sexual and what isn’t?”

Spare grew bolder as his argument evolved, and soon his accent started to come through. “’ave you seen how Englishmen write about Kali? That she’s savage, that she’s uncivilised, and the Bengalis call ‘er their saviour, say that she's leading the revolution for freedom. She's nude and bloody, aye, but I don't think 'er followers focus on i’ exactly, yeah?”

Crowley seemed ready to disagree, but Spare left no room for him to butt in. “And, I 'ave t’ say, for a drawing pulling from worship of female divini’y, there's a lot of cock in 'ere."

The magician barked out a laugh, taken by surprise. “I am surprised to find out we don’t seem to see eye to eye on the ecumenical matters. Your portfolio, sir, seems to agree with me.”

Spare looked away. “I don’t deny the power of sexual union. But I think it’s rather foolish t’ think there’s only one dimension to it. Is Love not the Law, as you say?"

Crowley got up and walked back over to the ice bucket. He didn’t answer immediately; as before, the younger artist’s words had brought back some ghost from his past. He began weakly chipping himself a fresh piece, letting out a long sigh before responding "It is Mr. Spare, it is.”

“Is that a crisis of faith I’m ‘earing, Mr. Crowley?”

“The beast is only human, after all,” a bittersweet smile grazed his lips. “It should be proof enough that I received those words that I can barely keep up with them myself. Why, what Love can be law for a man like me?”

“I don’t follow, Mr. Crowley.”

“This will sound terribly dull to a young man like yourself,” the magician sat down heavily, defeated by the topic he was about to breach, “but I’ve recently had to leave my wife Rose, who, I should mention, was the first one to speak those revelations.”

“I’ve been a fool. A terrible fool! She wasn't the woman I thought she was. I think that I made a mistake marrying her....having children with her." Crowley held the glass up to look at his distorted reflection sadly staring back like one of Spare's elongated portraits. “We had two daughters together. The drink took a hold of her, and then I found myself short of one.”

The whiskey turned bitter. Spare had only had schoolyard romances, passing fancies; he’d never seriously contemplated marriage or having children. He couldn’t see the man in front of him having thought much about those matters, either, but like many before them, it was something that life hit them with rather than something they meticulously planned for.

“If Love is romantic, Mr. Spare, then I can’t see any evidence for it being law,” Crowley whispered. “Perhaps I may be indulging myself, but even without the philosophy I’d find it more comforting if it was through simple sexual union that the divine manifests.”

“I’m sorry to ‘ear that, Mr. Crowley. I can’t say that I’ve done any differently,” Spare’s words were a quiet whispe r. “Perhaps it’s a foolish lad’s words, but I can’t give up on ‘oping there’s love. Body chasing, it can’t be all there is.”

“I can see you’ve done plenty of that however,” Crowley turned back the pages of the portfolio until finally settling on a pencil drawing of a kneeling woman. Bent down over a coiled snake, she seemed oblivious to the floating face of a man to her left. “Jannis from Hackney, isn’t she?”

Spare, caught off guard, blushed. "Ah, well, I just paid her to pose for me."

Crowley raised an incredulous eyebrow.

" 'onestly, I 'ave!"

The eyebrow was still raised.

"Well, that one time a' leas'... I'm no monk, mate. I did acknowledge that. What I'm saying is that the body is not the totality of it, aye?” Crowley was unconvinced. “You don't need to just do wilder and wilder things for bigger and bigger results. It's about the controlled application of force. You only need remove a single gear from a clock to stop it from working, no need to smash it to pieces. One drop of snake venom kills a bloke, you don't need a whole cup. Jannis didn't need to rodger me to 'ave me experience sex."

“I’m afraid that this is where our thinking parts ways, Mr. Spare,” there was a gleam in Crowley’s eyes, excitement; as if he was in possession of a great secret. "Breaking taboos is a powerful force, indeed. THE most powerful force,” his arms flew up slightly, his body barely moving forward toward the younger artist. “The taboo is how we cross the abyss. And, if one is to experience and embody the divine, one must thrust themselves into its black, chaotic depths.”

“Make no mistake, Mr. Spare, I am no armchair philosopher. I only converse with the children of the retort, and have Science as my darling lady. This talk is not a fancy of speculations, it’s the result of trial and error. I tried courting, I tried being a father and a husband... and how did it leave me? A pitiful wreck of a mourning father, betrayed by the carnal weakness of an idiot wife.”

The intense stare in his black, beady eyes was back. Spare couldn’t deny the magnetic pull in the man’s words, even if there was something in it he fundamentally disagreed with. 

“Mr. Spare, am I wrong to see the likeness between us two? All this talk of romantic love, it has gone through my own lips before, I should know it. But ultimately, I – and yourself- am a magician, not a family man, not a romantic fop who blushes at the sight of a ladies ankle”.

Crowley barked out a laugh. “I might even go visit Jannis and her massive breasts tomorrow without a drip of shame, polite society be damned! She'll urinate on you for an extra ha'penny you know. That's the enthusiasm I crave!"

As if to render any objections useless, he placed his hands on Spare’s luscious drawings. Spare  lowered his eyes, lightly smirking at the man’s tactics. “The power of taboo, aye? I see. I might agree with you on tha’ one. But,  _old_ chum, where does all that taboo breaking leave you? Is there any line left for you to cross? ”

"None,” replied a satisfied Crowley. “I'll do anything, fuck anyone. Cunny, arse, woman or man. You name it, I'll throw it in! Just don't expect me to buy them flowers."

The posh Cambridge man licked his lips before indulging in his vulgarity. "I've drunk piss, tasted turds! I've caught things you've never heard of!"

“And? After all tha’, what are you left wit’?”

“The question is not what, Mr. Spare, but where – and the answer is of course, closer to God.”

Spare took one stare at the man who seemed to be sitting so close to him,  _too close_ , and poured himself another drink. He would be the first to declare himself a shy man, self conscious of a working class background and the cockney accent that went with it. Every now and then, just like any other man, and specially like the man in front of him, he liked to tell stories about himself that weren’t true to impress his audience. Make those upper class toffs believe that he was something worthy of note. So when other men expanded a philosophy that sounded too grand for their little heads, he wasn’t particularly keen on calling them out; it would, after all, be pretty hypocritical of him to do so. But something about Crowley’s words irked him, provoked a certain strange bravado in him. 

"No taboos, says the gentleman? 'ave you ever taken a wand, Mr. Crowley?"

He may as well have speared the beast there and then.

"N-no! Of course not!" the magician quickly disguised his embarrassment with irritation. “I'm not a fancy boy like Neuburg." Spare allowed himself a moment of smugness by arching one eyebrow, which only riled the older man further. 

“ Ha, clever Spare, I see what you're suggesting.  But again your presumptions are wrong; I am well knowledgeable in how to stimulate my own body. A finger up the bum, you might say, is not a taboo for me.”

Spare smirked.

"It's not about your arse mate. I reckon your taboo is being passive. You know; vulnerable."

"Faugh! I've been initiated more times than you can count! That means being bound, blindfolded, stripped, buried alive. What is that but vulnerable?"

"But that's all ceremony. You know as well as I that you're not in any real danger, and that everyone in the room, man or woman, stands on the same level. There is no fear of scorn, that in your moment of vulnerability you will be seen differently and rejected. As much as it tries to evoke the powers of the divine, it is utterly devoid of emotion. And only when you give yourself emotionally you can truly expose yourself."

“Ridiculous! Firstly, I’m disappointed in a fellow initiate for being so dismissive of sacred ceremonies they themselves have taken part in. You ARE supposed to feel exposed, that’s the reason d’etre of it! Secondly, that’s not what’s got my goat...” Crowley downed his glass then anxiously stood up to walk it out for a bit, again.

Wandering towards a desk, he picked up a framed papyrus illustration of the Egyptian child-god Horus he’d purchased in Cairo after the fateful night with his now ex-wife. He looked into it as he spoke.

“Mr. Spare, understand this about me. I am, like you, an artist. A poet, really. I try to live life led by the heart, truly. If I drink it is because it is my Will to drink. If I fuck it is because it is my Will to fuck. If I pull a woman away from an awful engagement and take her around the world, only to marry her, speak to the gods with her, and have children with her...well, you get my point.”

There was a moment of silence. Spare rested his head on his hands, his eyes looking up towards the lone figure across the room. A man like Crowley was nothing if not a one way ticket to Bedlam.  A single conversation revealed a fascinating coliseum where Man and Beast wrestled control with dizzying speed. Spare himself wasn’t a stranger to the incongruities that could plague the heart of the artist, and which were made even more noticeable by their magickal practices.  Spare wasn’t fond of the Beast, but he rather empathised with the Man.

The smoke from the censer was starting to weaken and leak out the open window into the night air of London city.

“I never lie to myself. I married Rose because I loved her. Truly. And as headstrong as I am by reputation, it frightened me. I have never and perhaps never will love someone the way I...well... _still_ love Rose. It pains me, right here in this heart that leads me through life, to have to divorce her. I can’t bear to see her now. I want to hold her, apologise to her, take her back and return to the way we were, but I know it will only lead to further disaster and that it is in conflict with my calling as Master of the Temple. And I have never been confused on my Will before now.”

Crowley put down the frame, gulping hard.

“Sex magick is not just about the physicality, _that_ you -agh- are _somewhat_ right about. Any reprobate can pretend they are Pan when they masturbate, or pressure their partner into some exotic pose that hits the right spots on the body. Indeed, it is exciting and powerful to break those taboos, and to hell with the society that shames us from ourselves, but that is not the totality of things. You are supposed to be of the gods, divine and embodying the forces of the universe that have defined our humanity since we became human. You are to feel it with your soul, your mind, and your heart, and most importantly, you feel it through your consort, not yourself.”

“So no, Mr. Spare, I have not taken a wand, because for me to do so would mean embodying the very forces that are currently tearing my heart to pieces as we speak. Do you understand me now?”

The boy in Spare felt giddy at hearing the Great Beast edge as close to an admission that he was wrong that he would ever give. The man in him, however, simply nodded in understanding. Perhaps he should give the older magician some credit: there was something to be said about a man who laid his soul bare in front of a perfect stranger. Where other men would have hid behind empty words or throw him out, Crowley had humoured his arguments, and had even exposed turmoil that in some vicious eyes would’ve been a discredit to his philosophy. 

A deep, dark sadness radiated from the beast, combined with a sense of impending doom. The way he saw it, the path before him bifurcated. It was either to be with someone you love, where said love could ultimately destroy them both, or cast off love entirely while on a quest to be a realized being. Neither were promises of happiness. 

Spare could give him no answers. Instead, he stood up, hand resting on the back of the sofa, and looked around the room. The gods seemed to stare at them from behind the many eyes of their statues and paintings. “No, I don’t think I  want to  understand you,” he replied truthfully to his host. “ And truthfully, I don’t think we’re meant to understand each other. But you an’ I, Mr. Crowley, have crossed paths for a reason. ”

The magician stood still as the artist walked around the sofa, casually closing the distance between them. “And I think you knew tha’ from the beginning. Crowley me ol’ sunshine,” Spare smiled, “Which god were you ‘oping I’d embody tonight?”

Crowley straightened his pose, black eyes showing his surprise at the other man’s words. After a few moments he chuckled. He had been caught red-handed, and they both knew it. 

“I have _no_ idea what you’re on about, Mr. Spare!”

* * *

The Cafe Royal was extraordinarily decorated ceiling to floor with silvered mirrors and gold reliefs, and was easily mistaken for a parlour lifted directly from Paris. It may as well have been, as it’s founder was a wine merchant fleeing from bankruptcy in his home France, only to find success again with his new establishment in Soho. The precious metals lining the walls attracted the underspending wealthy, while the reputation attracted the overspending bohemians. Exclusive wines and champagnes for one, coffee and tea for the other. Son of a literal Bohemian, Victor Neuburg drank coffee. Daughter of Irish immigrants to Australia, his friend Leila Waddell drank tea.

Neuburg had been talking at Waddell for what felt like an eternity. What had begun as a two-way rant about their mutual friend and his ego had devolved into a long monologue from Neuburg about the grievances their relationship had caused him. At long last he’d taken a break to breathe and sip his steamless coffee, pretending it was still warm as he drank.

“Well” Leila interjected, “That’s certainly not nice of him, I can say that much. Normally I’d tell you to confront someone for acting like that, but knowing him he won’t listen.”

Neuburg sprung back up. “Oh, and that’s not all of it!” Leila sank back down. “He bloody well asked me to come travelling with him in a few weeks!”

“What? You mean overseas?” she asked.

“Yeah! Says he wants to get out of London, says he wants to wander the desert like Christ. Well no, I said the last bit, but he may as well have said it! Asked me if I’d go with him, clear my own head.”

Leila thought about asking the obvious question, but just let him continue, knowing too well that he would regardless.

“I don’t know. I would like to get out of the city for a bit too, but the thoughts of being stuck with him for God knows how long isn’t as exciting. Agh, I need to clear the air with him first somehow.” Neuburg slumped back into his chair.

“Well Vickie, you know Al; he only acknowledges action. You can huff and puff at him all you want, but the best way to blow his house down is with a bloody battering ram!” Leila smirked.

“Yes! Ahaha! God, that would knock him down a peg alright.” Neuburg giggled, “but that cockney painter is over with him right now, probably being bent over the table as we speak.”

“Hey, as long as it’s over his own table, they can have at it!”

Leila went on to prompt Neuberg into imagining comedic fantasies, riffing off one another, picturing walking in on Spare and Crowley doing the literal Beast-with-Two-Backs, apologising before cuckolding one with the other, cackling all the while. Leila, as ever, got much more graphic and vulgar than Neuburg could keep up with, making him laugh all the harder as she made violent slapping motions with her fists to create accurate sound effects for their scene.

Jokes were made and plans were laid.

* * *

The mood had changed. Both Spare and Crowley had found themselves sitting in front of the fireplace, cross-legged and with their backs to the coffee table where Spare’s drawings still were in open display. Censer smoke long since cleared, Crowley puffed a small amount of hashish from his pipe to make up the difference. Spare, having eased up himself, no longer forced down his cockney accent and had been regaling Crowley with stories of the lowlifes he hung around with in East London in order to cheer him up.

The fire slowly began to die, and reaching for the bucket where they kept the firewood blocks, Crowley was struck with inspiration. He got up suddenly, and motioned Spare to follow him. 

“Spare me a hand,” unable to help himself, he smiled cheekily at Spare’s groan as he walked towards a particularly big trove of papers on his desk. On top of it, a stuffed crocodile guarded the written treasures. 

The artist gently, but firmly, lifted the dead reptile while Crowley pulled fistfuls of what appeared to be discarded poems from it’s clutches.

“Wha’ ‘ave you got there?”

“Hah, old drafts of bad poems, nothing worth keeping. You can put my crocodile down now.”

Spare, feeling the effects of the booze in his blood now that he was standing, gave the lizard a kiss on it’s snout as if it were a pet dog “Who’s a good lad? You are!”

Crowley laughed, igniting the old poems and throwing them in the fireplace. Before long, the wood caught and a blazing fire lit the room. The Great Beast felt lighter, watching the awful writing he’d vomited out in his grief vanish and become something warming and bright. Sparks escaped into the air, ephemeral and star-like.

Spare rejoined him, sitting on the leopardskin rug close to it’s heat. Crowley looked at the younger man’s face, lit by flickers of yellow and orange, set at it’s edges by mysterious shadows, and he saw him as he’d drawn himself in his automatic drawings. Yet what once appeared as a gothic intensity now, in the flesh and the colour, showed a man who was simply beautiful, as though he were a god of the sun. The first few times he’d met him Crowley had seen a bit of the impish Pan in him. Yet now that both had walked beyond the curtain of initial impressions he began to see there was more of Apollo, Mithras, maybe even Krishna, to him, to the way light was glinting off his eyes as he gazed into the licks of flame.

They both settled into comfortable silence as the ghosts of one man’s heartbreak were reduced to ashes. Suddenly, Spare turned and looked into the beast’s eyes. Crowley felt a hand on top of his own, and then he heard the shuffling of a body moving closer.  Fingers entwined together. As much as he wanted to stare ahead as he plunged into the abyss, Crowley closed his eyes as he felt the other man’s breath on his own. 

It wasn’t the first time he’s been kissed by a man, and certainly it wouldn’t be the last, but Crowley found himself entirely unprepared for the meek, soft touch of Spare’s lips on his. A hand went to the back of his head, cradling and guiding, and despite his partner being younger, he found himself entirely unable to do anything but respond and accept the other’s lead. 

The hand atop his disappeared, and he found himself being pushed slowly to lie on the rug. His mind was strangely empty. Spare straddled him, the kiss deepened, and despite the long, tortuous contact, there was no excitement within his belly. There was no sign of the customary fiery sensation excited in his lower chakras, there was no curling of the divine serpent ready to strike; instead there was a strange void of no desire, filled to the brim with endless possibility. 

To Will without Desire, wast that it? What was that boy doing to him?

Spare broke the kiss,  straightening up. His legs still caging the other man’s waist, his hands were splayed out comfortably on Crowley’s stomach. He had a small smile on his lips, blue eyes shining with something in it that he’d never witnessed before. Crowley felt as if his body was on the verge of shivering, yet could not bring itself to release the energy required to do so. 

When Spare bent to reach his lips once more, dark curls falling on Crowley’s forehead, the magician let out a breathy sigh. In the back of his head, his befuddled mind was racing to try to make sense of his lack of virility, of that energy that wasn’t lust yet was so similar to it. Spare didn’t kiss him. “ _Kia_ , mate,” he whispered against the magician’s lips. “Do you understand me now?”

Crowley raised one hand and brought it against the top of Spare’s head. It started as a caress of the soft black curls; as it travelled down it closed the artist’s eyes, before finally coming to rest on his lips.  Crowley reached up, resting on his elbow, and placed a light kiss on them. 

“You’re no beast, mate. You’re a pussycat,”Spare smiled, his eyes still closed.

“Silence” the beast meekly protested.

What may have been minutes passed, neither could tell. In the fireplace, the final page of the poetic sacrifice combusted, a line of orange creeping across it’s surface, transforming it to ash. Both spotted the final words to be burned away; “a rose”. Spare placed his arm around the beast, rubbing his back and holding him close. In the aftermath of the kiss, Spare’s strange energy felt a sort of high that seemed like a distant memory.

Crowley knew he was in mortal peril, that his wounds were in the open, raw and exposed, to the gratuitous perusal of a young cockney artist who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by associating with him. He knew the man holding him knew he could break him in that moment with a single word coming from his lips. 

A demon inside of him screamed _No, get back, stand on your own two legs your weakling, this is unbecoming of a magician_ , but it was Maya, a temporary illusion. What he felt now was somehow both frightening and soothing, giving him a sense of release akin to a peaceful death. Maybe this was the key to true magick after all. Going beyond the desire of profanity and sacredness, going beyond desire itself...

If Apollo had manifested himself that night through the young artist, he’d brought with him his close friend Hermes to say the goodbyes. After a long silence, Crowley almost heard Spare’s cheeky smirk as he said:

“’ave to ask, which o’ my drawins do you want?”

Crowley, however, had been ridden by the trickster god enough to know how to reply.

“Hmm. Jannis and her big breasts.”

The two laughed. Crowley’s heart soaring, he took Spare’s face in between his hands and kissed him all-none-too-gently. 

“You cheeky cunt!” Spare exclaimed, before softly going in for sweet seconds.

Crowley’s heart soared.

* * *

Dawn light crept through the office window as Neuburg made his way up the stairs to the Equinox offices. Seeing Crowley’s coat still hung just outside the door, he took a giddy breath, fully expecting to be met with the scene he and Leilah had joked about the previous day.

With all of the flair befitting a dancer, he flung open the door and theatrically strode in, far too performed to be believable. But quickly scanning the room, he saw no sign of the aftermath of what he imagined had transpired. If anything, the office was cleaner now that the stack of papers under the crocodile was gone.

Finally he saw to male bodies, rolled up in the leopardskin rug by the smouldering fire. Clothed.

“Ah- uh- Oh bugger... Aleister…” he stammered, not quite knowing what to do now that there was no dramatic scene to stumble upon.

Crowley reared his head from over Spare’s body, and without a beat shouted;

“NEUBURG YOU FLACCID PRICK HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU TO STOP FLOPPING THAT FISHES WIT OF YOURS AROUND. GET OUT AND TURN THE FUCKING STOVE ON.”

Spare, who had had plenty of warning as the other man had nudged him awake the moment he’d heard Neuburg coming through the front door, could only smirk as he ducked the gunfire overhead. The dancer, completely gobsmacked, hopped to and closed the door behind him while he was at it.

“Ignore him and his big lips. I always have to tell him to shut up before he starts flapping them around.” Crowley snuggled back into Spare’s arms.

* * *

Tidying himself up, Spare began to pack up his portfolio as Crowley nursed a steaming cup of tea.

“Well mate, wha’ can I say? Maybe keep that one off the man’le where everyone else can see it, yeah? If you don’t mind.”

“Faugh! Any more demands?” Crowley barked.

“Yeah actually” Spare touched Crowley’s arm; “Maybe try bein’ nice to yer man. You know the lad loves you, yeah? Maybe show ‘im a bitta love back.”

Crowley sighed. “I will humour you, Mr. Spare.”

The two smiled at each other, and with a nod of his head, the young artist took his leave. Crowley, once alone, admired the new addition to his art collection: in the end he’d asked for the nude self portrait of the artist, the surreal scene where his blended in with other naked bodies amidst spectral fog. He appreciated the likeness of his face, yet his artistic talents, as plentiful as they were, could do no justice to the memory of electric blue eyes coming alive amidst the dull fire fed by his demons. Had the other man not forced him to desist, Crowley would’ve gladly put his portrait on the mantle, right next to his Hindu and Egyptian gods.

Neuburg came into the room. “Sorry Al, they were out of turkey sandwiches, so I got you ham instead if that’s alright.”

“Oh that’s fine. I actually feel more like ham now anyway. Tea?”

“Please.”

Pouring Neuburg a cuppa, he sat down with him by the crocodile.

“So, have you decided? Will you come with me on my travels? I’m thinking we should explore Algeria together for a bit....if you’ll have me?”


End file.
